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Interview with Gregory Domski
Courtney Camlin--CC
Cesar Lira--CL
Gregory J. Domski--GD
CC—Okay. Still very young
GD—I was a junior in college, I did go back and double check. I was a junior in college when 9/11 happened.
CC—Yeah, that's what I figured, we're good? And what made you decide to go to Augustana?
GD—Kind of a—I mean I really like the campus but honestly it was a lot more calculated than that. I got into like Northwestern and places like that. But the financial aid of Augustana was way better. The reputation of the college is really solid, and the financial aid package was much better. At Northwestern I woulda been an okay student, but not so good. They woulda gave me enough money to make tuition competitive. My girlfriend at the time, my wife now, she was going to Western and so I wanted to go to a small liberal arts college, with a solid pre-med program, ‘cause that's what I thought I wanted to do. Um, but I also wanted to be not so far away from my girlfriend. I wasn't going to Western. Because I'm being recorded, I won’t say why. I wanted to go to a good school that I could afford that was also geographically close to my girlfriend and far enough from my parents that they wouldn't be visiting every weekend.
CC—Right, yeah good idea.
GD—Seventeen year old me, that’s how I thought of it. So I lucked into it, really good school
CC—So just in general, what was your childhood like in Richmond?
GD—I was the oldest, am still the oldest of five. My dad was a painter, still is a painter, he owns his own really small company, like two or three people so very blue–collar. And my mother was a medical transcriptionist, also blue-collar. She typed reports. My parents are both pretty conservative, and they’re both still very conservative. Richmond is rural. Like it’s eleven hundred people. We didn’t live on a farm; we were surrounded by farms. It was—it’s kind of weird for me, I don’t know if this is relevant, but I’ll just keep talking until you tell me to shut up.
So I went to kindergarten and first grade in a small Catholic grade school in Johnsburg Illinois, but when we moved to Richmond, it was too far away and our family was getting bigger so it was getting a little bit too expensive. So I went to public school in Richmond through eighth-grade, then I went back to Marion Central Catholic High School in Woodstock, for high school. I was the only one from my class, and it was really weird. I never fit in very well at my grade school because even, starting at my grade school in second grade, I was already behind the cool kid curve, not that I would have been a cool kid anyway. And then, going to a high school that nobody from my grade school went to, it was again—I never—it’s not that I didn’t really fit in-but I never had strong connections, I still don’t have strong connective feelings for my high school. I have one close-ish friend and that’s just been like a pattern that because I didn’t go to grade school for twelve years or ten years--whatever, with people, I was always a little bit disconnected. Just naturally introverted to begin with, so that probably didn’t help.
CC—Did Augustana help that at all or change that? Or was it still kind of the same?
GD—No, I felt much more connected at Augustana. No. One, or probably one or two kids from my high school, people from my high school, went to Augustana, but we ran in very different circles. And honestly, at Augustana, my deepest connections were with the faculty members in the Chemistry department, and some in the Math and Philosophy departments. Those are really where my most enjoyable coursework took place. And the other kind of nerdy chem kids, the Chem Club Kids. I felt much more connected to the school and to the people in it at Augustana than I ever did in high school or grade school.
CC—Cool, yeah, and did you find any of that connection also in the Quad Cities or did you not really?
GD—I was kind of limited. At that time, the Augie bubble was kind of thicker. I would go out to explore the Quad Cities, but I remained pretty disconnected. As part of the fraternity I was in, we did sandbagging when there was a flood. That I did it mainly to help my fraternity brother’s uncle whose business—So it was still kind of an Augustana related thing.
CC--Right
GD—And there wasn’t, at least I don’t remember there being as much of a push when I was a student, to get involved and make us part of the Quad Cities. It might have been there but it wasn’t as intentional as it seems now.
CC—Okay, so as far as 9/11 goes, and feeling that connectedness in the community at Augustana. Do you remember any special activities before or after, or maybe how the college changed after the attack?
GD—I was thinking about that this morning in preparation for today, and it was—I’ll probably tell you more information that you need—but I remember, or the way it happened, is we have a Chemistry Seminar. We had these things called Chem Chats; they used to happen more frequently than they do now. But on Tuesdays in the meeting period, we have a chemistry seminar, and that usually means someone from a large University would come, talk about their research, and try to recruit graduate students. And this was, the Internet had been around for a while, but we were just getting to the point where we used it quite a bit.
So before the chemistry seminar, I was online in the Olin, no Science computer lab, reading CNN.com, and it was right when the first plane hit. And so I had like five minutes to get to the seminar. So I was like ‘wow, that’s pretty crazy,’ but at that point going to the seminar I felt that this coulda been just a really bad accident. And so we have a 45-50 minute seminar and I remember at the beginning Dr. Wonky [sp], who’s no longer here, ‘hey did you hear what happened on the news?’ ‘No I just came out of class.’ ‘A plane ran into the world Trade center,’ and he was, you know, ‘whoa that’s terrible,’ but then everyone got kind of focused. The news hadn’t really spread yet, so we were kind of in this bubble at this Chemistry seminar and then, after the seminar was out, there was a little bit more of a buzz and I went back ‘cause I wanted to check my email and I came across—I went back to CNN.com and the second plane had hit. And for a split second I was kind of naive and was like, could that have been a coincidence too? Is there something weird going on with the air traffic controller? No, there’s no way that’s a coincidence?
And then the rest of it—I don’t want to say it became a blur, but I don’t remember what the campus did. I remember there being TVs set everywhere, like in Olin in the lounge, people to watch the news coverage. I remember watching a lot of news coverage kind of on my own, in my room, glued to the TV. But in terms of a normal college student, I kind of wondered how is the college going to response? Are they going to start cancelling classes, are there going to be big rallies, how dramatic is the response going to be? I remember being disappointed, not in the college but it didn’t seem like it was a huge response. It was kind of ‘business as usual,’ like the professors acknowledged that it had happened, but we were still very much, at least I was under the impression we still have a job to do. We’re still students. We need to keep on learning, meeting learning objectives. Classes kept going pretty much as normal as I recall, and I remember wondering, ‘cause I didn’t have a solid opinion. ‘Is this appropriate or should we have slowed down and spent more time ruminating on it?’ And I don’t know if I ever came up with a solid conclusion, but in some ways it was appropriate, like, I mean the way America responded and the people at Augustana kind of responded. I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but was: ‘this one act of terrorism is not going to change or divert us from our everyday lives.’ And maybe that was a good way; instead of giving us a lot of time to ruminate on it, to say, this is an act of terror, but we’re going to keep moving forward. But yeah, I don’t know if that was intentional but that’s kind of how it went down in retrospect. I’m happy; I think that was a good way to go.
CC—As far as policies in the community at Augustana like were there new…Nowadays, the topic that’s going on now is whether or not we should arm public safety because of the school shootings on college campuses. Was there anything like that you guys have any drills you needed to do or do you remember anything like
GD—No, it seemed like people were pretty, I think not so much at Augustana, in the Quad Cities in particular because it’s a blue-collar area, and people got more angry than they got scared. That is what I remembered, is that just in general, the people I talked to, or what I saw on the local news, or just kind of the atmosphere, people were sad, obviously, but the response was defiance and anger rather than, at that point, kind of being fearful. It was more—we are going to find who did this and do bad things to them and exact revenge.
CC—Yeah
GD--But at Augustana, though, it was very kind of Swedish-Lutheran in its response. It was very kind of measured and even-keeled, so I don’t remember there being, and I’m actually kind of surprised, as litigious as society has gotten, or even back then, I was kind of surprised there wasn’t a whole lot of things being put into place, like drills and stuff like that. I think they did a good job being pretty even-keeled and not being super reactionary. Maybe being like the rest of America should have been, taking maybe a ‘wait and see’ or a respectful approach. Like you know, this happened. This is horrible. We’re gonna reflect on it. Augustana kind of seeme— the atmosphere—a little bit slower to anger and bubble up. They were more contemplative, more rational, and even-keeled. And I thought that was a good thing, that’s kind of the way, thinking back, I was kind of disappointed the way at least the media portrayed Americans acting. That immediate anger and frustration. That was the immediate response. It would have been great if everyone lived in the ivory tower and took a step back and said, ‘why did this happen, is there something we can take from this?’ Instead of just immediately getting pissed off and looking for excuses to go to war. ‘Cause I remember that was the other thing I thought, that immediately went into my head, and I’m not a prophet or anything. At the time, I didn’t have any problems with George Bush—the younger one. But I was like, ‘somebody’s going to use this as an excuse to go to war with Iraq. They’re going to find a way to do that.’ And I wasn’t super political, I was kind of interested in it from an academic standpoint, but I was like ‘this is going to happen. This is how it’s going to play out.’
CC—And in terms of that going to war theme, obviously you didn’t enlist?
GD—Right.
CC—Right after that, did you have any friends maybe here at Augustana that were like, maybe I should put my education on hold or do you know of anybody who did that?
GD—I don’t remember anyone doing that, or anyone really feeling that way. There was one person, I was a CA at seminary my Junior year. And he already was a little conflicted about being in college to begin with
CC—Okay
GD—His father was a career marine and he wanted to, he was kind of conflicted like he was always talking about the possibility of going into the military leaving college to go do that. He felt really strongly about serving his country, even more so after the September 11 attacks. Um, and he never ended up doing that. He did and it’s interesting. This kid, Jeff Patneau, he’s been on the website a few times in recent years. He ended up finishing Augustana, but ended up working for the CIA and he died in a car accident. Now I’m trying to remember, it might have been Libya. It was a North African country [unintelligible] as a CIA—I don’t want to say operative, because that might be too strong of a word. But he was a member. He worked for the CIA and was killed in northern Africa. It might have been Yemen, I think it might have been Yemen if memory is serving me now. He was one person. He already had that kind of leaning where he wanted to do something and I think that kind of crystallized it for him, but he decided going the other way—not going to the regular military but to be part of central intelligence.
CC—Okay, cool. And then I know you said that on the news, that kind of the Quad Cities and the media through the Quad Cities seemed kind of angry and things like that. Did they, or do you remember, if they held any like vigils or programs for people to come?
GD—I don’t remember anything specific, I didn’t, although that doesn’t—I’m sure that they happened. Again, I wasn’t super connected to the Quad Cities community at that point, so if they had had something, I mean if they had had something on campus, I would probably go to that or participate in discussion groups and things like that on campus. Since I had no real feelings of connection to the Quad Cities themselves at that point, I wouldn’t have ventured off campus and paid much attention to that. One thing I do remember I know, although my memory is a little fuzzy. It was either tied to the 9/11 attacks or Hurricane Katrina, I need to get my dates right on this. But I remember there being some backlash and I remember also thinking this, and I was being a cynic and I’m embarrassed to admit this. But I remember also thinking, ‘’oh the price of gasoline is gonna go up because they’re gonna tie this to the Middle East.” And I remember Casey’s—I think it was tied to the 9/11 attacks, but Casey’s gas stations jacked up their prices a lot.
CC—It was, I found a news article from the next day.
GD—I remember being really pissed off about that, as a student and as a person. That was just shitty. And I think they got taken to task on that too. They got in trouble with the state of Illinois, if I remember right; they got in trouble for price gouging. That’s absolutely what they were doing there.
CC—Right, okay. I remember reading too that there was a Rally for Peace that May in 200—well it would have been 2002. And I was just wondering do you remember anything about that? It had said it had started because a faculty member had some type of racist action or something happened to her or him. It didn’t really say.
GD—Yeah I do remember that.
CC—Do you think that was connected to the 9/11 attacks?
GD—Yeah, I remember, ‘cause we—the weather was really nice. We were outside. The thing happened outside. And it seemed—it was actually the first time that I experienced anything at Augustana that kind of had the feeling of something we would have learned would have happened on campuses in the 60’s—where there was really strong community spirit. People I would have never expected to show up at this thing were there to listen. And I do remember this was more about racial tolerance and intolerance than about the September 11 attacks, but I think it segwayed nicely—or made the connection—the type of hatred that people had for different races or cultures is the type of thing that would perpetuate the type of hatred and actions that lead to 9/11. Because you know, while there is domestic racism and intolerance, this was kind of an act of international intolerance.
I remember hearing something, I disagree with the way they went about it. People somewhat distilled it really crudely that Muslims were angry about Britney Spears. I can understand why they would be frustrated with some of the way American society is going. But then I couldn't understand how Britney Spears affected them, I still don’t understand how Britney Spears and what she did affected them, or why that would make them so angry. But I guess their idea is they really feel that they need to spread Islam. The militant Muslims spread Islam by force if necessary, seemed strange to me. Now I think that it might not have, maybe that’s what some of the people perpetuated those attacks believe, but I think it was maybe more response to America's heavy-handedness in the region.
CC—Yeah
GD—And it had nothing to do with Britney Spears. It was just America sometimes forcefully tries to impose its ideals on other countries, and that was the wrong way to go about it—maybe pushback.
CC—So, was that whole Britney Spears idea just something that like maybe college students your age, and younger adults—Americans had? Was that like their opinion?
[cross chatter]
GD—I don’t think it was John Stewart who said it, but it was some pundit distilled it kind of like that. They heard a sound bite. They heard somebody in the Middle-East saying that they didn't like Britney Spears. Or that was one the things that they were—that somebody in the Middle East may have used that as an example of what was wrong with America, and that may have gotten extrapolated.
CC—Okay
GD—And in some ways, and again—I don't want to sound too crazy here—in some ways I would have liked to. If that’s part of what, if there were cultural objections and that's what precipitated the attacks. It might have been a good time, instead of getting angry and digging in further, for America to think about which way we're going. Now I—artists should be able to do, sing whatever they want—Miley Cyrus should be able to act however she wants. We have freedom of speech. But just because you can do something or act a certain way, should you do it?
CC—Correct
GD—And I would have liked to, I guess maybe it’s happening, but I kind of don’t think so. If 9/11 could have been turned into something positive, and I don’t think it has yet. I think we're just more scared than we were all those years. And I think it’s actually been getting worse—like I said—at Augustana around 9/11, the immediate response on campus wasn't to be afraid or to worry. But in the general public, the immediate response was to be scared. And it's just seemed like it’s every day, or every month, or every year there's another safe-guard—which it's good to be safe—put in place, still in response; in some way you can trace it back to 9/11. Instead of doing that and kind of being reactionary, maybe taking a step back and thinking about, yes—like I said, we should let Miley Cryrus practice her art, if that's what you want to call it—but maybe if we would have taken some time to say, ‘what ARE our cultural values?’ ‘Are all the things that we value in pop culture, should we be idolizing—again I'm gonna go back to Miley Cyrus—should we idolize her?’ She should be allowed to do what she wants. She should be allowed to make a living, but should we have a grass-roots effort to—you know—teach our little kids, ‘you probably shouldn't swing around naked on a wrecking ball.’ That’s not a good thing.
CC—[Laughter] Right.
GD—I'm not conservative by nature but it would have been a good opportunity. I think 9/11 could have brought up something, a good change. We could have done a gut check and said, you know, ‘is our culture headed in the right direction?’ And I don’t think that that happened. I think what happened instead is we—that we got really scared, and really mad, and have been reacting ever since.
CC—Yeah. So that kind of leads into my next topic, or question is. What do you think has been the biggest change after 9/11 in America—in the community as a whole?
GD—I think that there is a lot more. I think people are a lot more scared than they've ever been. So that's a, I think that's a pretty lame response—thinking a lot of people would say that. But I was shocked, I think it was....no, it was my senior year of college, so a year after 9/11 I went home for a break. And I went to pick up my little sisters up at grade school ‘cause they didn't know I was home yet. So I thought I’d surprise them. FIND MISSING TEXT THAT GOES HERE
GD—I went to and I remember, when I was a student there was a kid—this happened once in a while—but he wore the same pants to school that he wore to his cub scouts meetings. And sometimes he would, this kid, would forget that his pocketknife was in his pants. So when I was a student, what happened, he just told the teacher, ‘listen I forgot that my pocketknife was in my pants.’ She said, ‘okay, I’ll hold on to it till the end of the day. At the end of the day I’ll give it back to you.’ Not a big deal. When I went to pick my sisters up, there was a sign: does your friend have a weapon; if so make sure to report it to somebody. While that’s probably a good idea, given the way things are going, I just remember thinking: ‘it was only eight years ago—yeah about seven or eight years ago—that I was a student here.’ And that’s not how that would have been handled. People were much more trusting, and now everybody’s afraid of a cub scout bringing his rinky-dink pocketknife to school.
Um, so I think that’s just an example that has stuck with me, that I think we’re just a lot more afraid now. And people, the government, or whoever is doing everything they can to try to keep us safe by putting restrictions and safeguards in place. And I don’t know when that’s gonna stop. Because—even with TSA agents, bad things happen. The TSA can only do as good of a job as the individuals who work there. My brother, one of my brothers, is a TSA agent. They don’t get paid that well. They don’t get treated particularly well, by their employers or by the people who have to go through security checkpoints. So I don’t know—it’s good that we have them there but that’s not going to be perfect either.
CC—Right.
GD—So that’s been the biggest [unintelligible], and now as a parent of a two year old I worry all the time. I try to stay even keel, but at daycare the other day—the daycare’s just two blocks away from Augustana. The woman, the daycare provider, she said, ‘what do you think? Should we put a lock on our door? A keypad lock on our door, that we only give the keypad to parents?’ And I was like, ‘I didn’t even think about that.’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but I never would have—I’s pretty safe, right by Augustana—that you guys wouldn’t have anything to worry about. But I guess I’d rather have you put it on and not need it than to keep your open-door policy.’ That parents just knock and walk in whenever they want, because one day it might not be a parent.
CC—Right.
GD—Who knows?
CC—Could you also argue: maybe that after 9/11 people became more curious or interested in, you know, the middle eastern culture? I know, we were doing some research too, and there were classes that were added for the winter term, like Islam and different cultural classes. Could you argue that, maybe people became more interested? And tried to become more tolerable to get that understanding? Or do you just not think that at all?
GD—I think that—I mean, people—I mean, I certainly, and again I’m from a liberal arts background, I’m a professor, so I like learning things. The people that I have talked to—although again, I’m not in the typical mainstream, blue-collar realm anymore—are more interested in understanding what’s going on over there. Even as a student, that was kind of my initial response, was—I mean, I don’t remember being really angry. I think I really, maybe I was too disconnected, too much in the Augie bubble, kind of wanting to understand what could have caused someone to decide to do this? What was the motivation to this, ‘cause it was kind of…in some ways it seemed kind of stupid. If you really wanted to damage the United States, it would have been more logical to go into the White House. And I know they were planning to do that, or to go into the Pentagon. They were planning to do that and, well they actually pulled that one off. But I didn’t understand why they went after the World Trade Center. And I still am not one hundred percent sure, except for that was kind of a symbol and an easy target on the east coast to hit. But I do think in general, and even blue-collar people, my dad is super conservative. He’s was—he’s a retired marine, ‘cause he was only in for four years. He’s done a lot more reading. His default response, I would have expected, would have been, probably used some really horrible language. But that ‘we’re gonna go and kill these people.’ You know, ‘use a nuclear bomb.’ But he’s read a lot about the Middle East. So I think even kind of in the blue-collar section people want to understand. If for no other reason, to see how it eventually is going to play out with oil and gasoline.
CC—Okay.
GD—But I do think, in general, there has been a push in most sectors of society, to try to understand that region. And you almost can’t help—if you watch the news you’d have to change the station every time the news is on to not learn something more about the Middle East because the media is also focusing on there. So even if you’re pretty passive about it—if you watch the news—you’re going to learn [cough] something that you didn’t know before and possibly understand the situation in the Middle East better.
CC—Um, did anything back at home change? Like, your parents did they make you—did they want you to come home after that weekend?
GD—No, they were pretty—I mean, being the oldest of five, my parents had five kids. They were pretty—I mean, I was the oldest and I was away at college. They were not super protective. They were never very helicoptery to begin with and they have always let me be fairly independent. Like high school I had a curfew—definitely an enforced curfew. But it didn’t—my mom, who is probably more conservative than my dad, I think her response was more of the typical kind of anger, fear—and she’s a little bit nutty like this, more ‘end times’ worries, she had. And my dad, his initial response—I was kind of— it was more measured than I’d thought it would be. Like I said, he actually started learning more, trying to look at it more rationally. ‘Why did this happen?’ ‘What is going on in the Middle East that caused this kind of feeling or this kind of action?’ My mom had a very emotional, in my opinion, irrational response. My dad was a little bit more measured, but neither one of them felt like it was going to happen in the Midwest or that I needed to come home or needed to circle the wagons with our family.
CC—It is interesting to get like a—somebody who was my age at the time, ‘cause I was ten, so you know, we were ten or whatever younger and it’s just, you know different and a very different scope and view and I think it’s interesting. Um, is there anything else that you really want to add or that maybe that we didn’t ask you about?
GD—Um no. Like I warned Dr. Leech, I don’t have any, I hadn’t thought about it as much because I mean, I was a junior so I was taking physical chemistry so I didn’t have a lot of mental space to spend processing it, so that was kind of weird too. Physical chemistry is a—it doesn’t allow you to think about anything else. Um, it’s all consuming and then a year, I had just gotten off of a ten week research program at Northwestern so I was still kind of science ah, nerd and that. So I hadn’t processed the sit—as much as, or what happened I didn’t have a lot of mental hard drive space to process it and then afterwards, um, after things kinda settled down or everyone got less, less emotional, it was almost too late to do a whole lot of processing. So I don’t have any real profound um, thoughts or reflections on it excepts to say that it’s, I’m a little bit disappointed. It could have been have been an opportunity for growth, I think it for American society and I think that we’ve actually taken steps backward. We’ve..
CC—Yeah
GD—We’ve gotten more fearful um, more angry rather than taking a good hard look at some of the things that might have precipitated this that kind of um, American, or Imperialism or how other countries might look at it, you know maybe we should be less involved in the conflicts of other countries. Maybe if we um, again, I don’t want to sound too much like a hippie, but maybe if we focused more on alternative energy or using our resources to fuel our economic growth instead of you know, sucking oil from every other country um on Earth, and trying to keep our fingers in their business, um that maybe, maybe I should I should change what I voted before, maybe Democracy doesn’t work for every single country. Um, I remember, I can’t remember if, I think I went to this talk when I was in graduate school um, where they talked about something called the “J-curve.” And I was in, or I was in chemistry or so I’m not sure why I went..
CC—This is at Northwestern?
GD—No I went to Cornell.
CC—Cornell, that’s right.
GD—And I’m not sure why I went to this talk, maybe just for the fun of it um, but they talked about the J-curve where with ah, where a country that’s unstable the bottom of the J is their stable point. And you could go into the country and push them up to the short part of the J or you could do a, that’s not as much work as pushing them up to the high point of the J but regardless of how much work you put in there’s a real good chance that if you don’t get them all the way up one way or another, they’re gonna slide back in their most stable state.
CC—Okay.
GD—And it might be too much work to impose Democracy on every country. Or too much work for America to get in there and do it but, um. So I think that’s another thing that we need, we could have maybe thoughts of ways to be more diplomatic and focus more on our own country, on our own culture rather than trying to impose democracy on the Middle East. Especially if the reason for imposing Democracy on the Middle East was to stabilize our oil and gas prices and a..
CC—Right.
GD—Again, I have no idea, I’m not that kind of phD but sometimes it seems like that’s our motivation for meddling is to stabilize our oil and gas prices for the sake of our own economic growth but there are things we can focus on domestically that could safeguard those as well without um, imposing our will on other countries and building that kind of resentment that’s evidently in some certain pockets.
CC—And I know you said you didn’t really have time to process it and maybe it wasn’t your main focus because you were in physical chem. But what—did you have any like kind of concern for your future and how like going to war and all this, how it would affect it or the future of America? And like what are your views on it now and with your child growing up and going to become a member of society, do you have maybe any like ideas of how maybe 9/11 and the war highly altered...
GD—Yeah I mean, at the time, I mean I wasn’t worried, I’m still not in good enough physical shape to probably be allowed to join the military but then I certainly wasn’t um I probably drank too much beer in college, I got a little too chubby. But um, I didn’t have any immediate thoughts about joining the military I thought, you know if I had to serve my country in some capacity it would probably be better with like you know, chemistry training or what not so I didn’t have any considerations about joining the military. But, I mean I feel in some ways kind of bad, that I don’t feel very hopeful that my son is going to grow up in a world that was happier or more trusting um, than the one that I grew up in. And so I guess with him I kinda focus on, a cause he’s only two so I haven’t had a lot of time to just ah, but um I think what I’m going to try to focus on with him is teaching him how to be present in the moment, which I’m not very good at, and be happy when and where he can and try to live free of fear, the fear that is in um
CC—Yeah.
GD—that is still kind of being perpetuated by the mass media the fear that we all kinda live in and learn how to be happy despite that and um focus on the things that he can control but um, and see if there is anything that I can do to help him live in a society that feels more fear to free him of that but I’m not real hopeful that he’s going to grow up with kind of the same thing, I mean probably when you were little kids too, when you were younger you were always taught you could be whatever you wanted to if you put your mind to it, you have limitless possibilities and I don’t think that that’s a good message to give kids anymore necessarily. I was reading something the other day that said “happiness is reality minus expectations” and the reason that the people who grew up in the great depression were actually happier than “millennials” and I’m technically a millennial by like one year, like you guys are millennials, the reason that they were happy was because their expectations were pretty low, the reality was better than their expectations but it didn’t take much for the reality to be better than their expectations because having grown up in the depression they were always waiting for the other shoe to drop and so when it didn’t um in the fifties and sixties when the economy was you know going really strongly, their reality was really better than their expectations and the reason that this article, the point was the reason why millennials as a class or as a group right or a generation are more unhappy is because our expectations are so high um, and our reality and especially with the economy and the way it’s been, our reality is very disperate and worse than our expectations and so that’s something I don’t know to try to work on with my son is that setting, you know, realistic worthwhile realistic expectations for his life um, but trying to keep those close to his reality so, you know telling him that you’re going to be able to you know, fly wherever you want to fly whenever you wanna fly there, probably not realistic. We might, it might get to a tipping point sometime in the middle of his lifetime. You know, we’re more, I think we’re gonna need to focus more on living you know simply, you’re not going to be able to buy a new car every other year um, you’re not going to be able to throw for example, your lawn mower away when it breaks. You know, you’re gonna have to try to actually fix it and try to make things, were gonna go to a less disposable society so working on him to adjust his expectations um, might be the best thing I can do for him.
CC—That’s interesting, yeah.
CL—Could you see yourself taking your child to the 9/11, the World Trade Center—the new building—just showing him like, 'this is what happened?'
GD—Yeah I think so, I remember—this is not the same thing at all—but um, maybe it’s similar. My aunt she never had children so she was pretty close with my brothers and sisters and I and for my eighth grade graduation present she took me to Washington D.C. And we’re not like, not your typical, we grew up Catholic but she took me to the Holocaust memorial and I was very far, or the museum, was removed very far removed, I mean I had read about it in school and stuff but it had very little to do with my family’s history but it still had a very profound effect on me even as an eighth grader. And I think that the things we have in our culture—I mean—I think in Germany it’s probably pretty different since there our things happening in their culture. Germans still feel an immense sense of guilt. Even Germans that are our age probably feel a little bit of guilt for the Holocaust even though they had nothing to do with it, you know. I think 9/11 and the TSA and the police officers in every school—even though they’re not directly related with 9/11, but kind of the application of fear—that’s gonna have an impact on my son’s life. Um, probably for the rest of his life. So I think it would be more relevant to take him to the 9/11 memorial and talk to him and explain um, why your world is the way it is. Our family, we celebrate Christmas but we are not religious—pretty much at all —um but we still celebrate Christmas. And I still want him to see why Christmas is called Christmas, why it’s on the date it is, you know, because it’s a huge—I want him to understand that it drives big sectors of our economy. It shuts productivity down and I’m happy that it does that, I like the time off. But I think it’s important for, I want my son—everyone—to understand why we do certain things even if it’s something, and I won’t say as trivial as Christmas, to understand the reasons behind it even if you know he wasn’t alive when 9/11 happened. I want him to know why he goes through security screening and why it’s valuable and why you’re not gonna, when we go fly on an airplane for the first time you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna be invited into the cockpit the way I was the first time I was on an airplane. You’re not gonna get the um little American Airline wings, sorry buddy, that door doesn’t open during a flight. So yeah, I would want to expose him to the site itself but to—once he’s old enough to understand it—um, the events that led the world to being the way that it is or just the same reason I want him to understand the Christmas story. Not that I necessarily believe in the historical accuracy or whatever but, of it, but that there’s this story that a lot of people believe this and they hold it you know at their core. That there is you know, hundreds—thousands of years—I don’t think Christmas really took hold til...yeah maybe 1000 A.D. that you know it got huge press time and then in the 1800s is when it really got (…) in our memory or dug into our culture. But this holiday that gives you two weeks off of school has really detailed and interesting roots that got ahold of something like our economy and um is related to some very interesting historical happenings you know and things like that.
CC—Yeah.
GD—Maybe that’s the best way to deal with things like Christmas and 9/11 is to seek to understand them um, rather than to be frustrated or kind of mystified by them.
CL—True, very true.
CC—Yeah that’s interesting how much can change the future and how you’re gonna teach your kids and what you’re gonna do so I think that’s good. I’m—I have no more questions for you, I think you covered everything okay.
GD—Cool, well I hope you guys get something useful from it. Again I feel a little bit bad not having more or having stronger feelings or—like I said—I didn’t, I was in a weird place where I didn’t process it very much and I again, I don’t want to sound aloof, but as an academic and even as a student, I kind of wanted to be an academic; I wanted to try to remove myself from things and think about them before I get all emotional about them so.
CC—Right.
GD—Hopefully you guys will get some other perspectives from the other people in your class; who have interviews with people who did a better job processing it than I did. Or maybe had a more visceral response.
CC—Well every response counts. That works.
GD—Cool.
CC—Alright.
GD—Thank you guys very much.
CC—Thank you!